Palestinians: Trump Not Serious About Alt-Right Till He Offers Them Lifetime Pensions For Killing Blacks
Charlottesville, August 30 - Officials in the Palestinian Authority and its various administrative organs have reacted dismissively to accusations that US President Donald Trump supports white supremacists, insisting that no such characterization could apply if the president does not offer financial incentives for the murder of African-Americans.
Palestinian envoys in Washington and officials in Ramallah refuse to accept the notion that Donald Trump endorses, or even condones, racial violence against blacks, as according to Palestinian sensibilities, true demonstration of encouragement for violence involves guaranteed a guaranteed lifetime pension for the perpetrator of such attacks, or for the family of any attacker killed in the attempt, explained Cultural Attaché to Washington Aiwil Qillem.
"We are reserving judgment, to say the least, on this irresponsible rhetoric," intoned Qillem in a telephone interview. "Certainly we Palestinians know what legitimate support for a murderous supremacist ideology looks like, and Mr. Trump's alleged sympathies for the White Nationalist movement appear to fall far short of what we know to be a minimal requirement to be called 'support.' You can call us back when he begins budgeting thousands of dollars per month for each killer of a black person or immigrant, with the number of victims compounding the payment accordingly."
"These descriptions are not serious," echoed Saeb Erekat in Ramallah. "Has President Trump vowed never to stop paying killers of African-Americans despite budget shortfalls or delinquent pledges? Has he characterized the murderers of blacks as embodying the national ethos? Has he ordered the education system to lionize them and raise an entire generation of like-minded thugs hell-bent on killing the inferior race? I think we can all agree there are certain standards of evidence to be met before anyone reasonable can agree to put Donald Trump and support for white supremacist violence in the same sentence. We are just not there, to put it mildly." The look on Erekat's face dripped with disappointment.
Palestinian experts did not dismiss outright the possibility that Trump might embrace such support for white supremacy, but do not foresee it in the short term. "He's always trusted the private sector to handle things," contended Maher Shalal-Hashbaz of Bir Zeit University's political science department. "I can't see federal funding for a white supremacist murderer pension program, not when the president's conservative base wants to cut government spending."
"But if he can get Mexico to pay for it, well, that changes things," added Shalal-Hashbaz. "We should wait and see whether that happens."
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PA then lied, claiming Guterres expressed “understanding” of prisoners’ “suffering,” vowing to “put an end to it” UN spokesman: “All of the quotes attributed to the Secretary-General are fabricated"
The Palestinian Authority entrapped UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres into meeting with the mother of 5 Palestinian terrorists yesterday, and then lied about what happened.
According to a UN spokesman, Guterres was not scheduled to meet the families of terrorist prisoners but were surprised by the sudden request of the PA to meet with “mothers of detained children,” as reported by The Times of Israel: “At the end of a meeting with Palestinian officials this afternoon in Ramallah, the secretary-general was informed that a group of Palestinian mothers of detained children wanted to give him a petition. Confronted with the situation, he received the group which presented him a petition.”[The Times of Israel, Aug. 29, 2017]
The PA’s official news agency WAFA presented it differently. It described Guterres’ meeting with parents of prisoners, including Latifa Abu Hmeid, mother of 5 terrorists, 1 who was killed as a “Martyr” and the other 4 who are serving between them 17 life sentences, very routinely, without any reference to it not being on the schedule: “UN Secretary-General António Guterres met this evening [Aug. 29, 2017] in Ramallah with several families of Palestinian Martyrs (Shahids) and prisoners that are sitting in the Israeli occupation’s prisons... Present at the meeting were Latifa Abu Hmeid...” [WAFA, Aug. 29, 2017] Moreover, the PA made an outright lie, fictitiously reporting that the UN Secretary-General responded favorably to statements about Palestinian prisoners and that he “understood” their “suffering,” to make it seem like he accepted their claims about the Palestinian terrorist prisoners.
This is what the PA claims to have told Guterres: “The prisoners’ families demanded that the UN secretary-general act in a serious and concrete manner to save the lives of more than 6,500 Palestinian prisoners and female prisoners sitting in the Israeli occupation’s prisons from the grave violations that the [Israeli] occupation Prison Service perpetrates against them, such as medical neglect, administrative detentions, and the arrest of women, children, and parliament members.” [WAFA, Aug. 29, 2017]
The Almagor Terror Victims' Association called on Israel's Foreign Ministry to delay the return of Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon to the UN, after UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres "blatantly evinced disrespect" for Israel's terror victims.
On Tuesday, Guterres met with the families of terrorist murderers and placed a bouquet of flowers on arch-terrorist Yasser Arafat's grave.
Almagor CEO Meir Indor said, "The fact that the new UN Secretary General visited Arafat's grave and met with the mothers of jailed terrorists and murderers, shows blatant disrespect for the graves of the murdered victims and all Israeli society."
"Unfortunately, the UN organizations for many years have chosen to aid Palestinian terrorists, either directly or indirectly. Perhaps the time has come for us to call the UN by its real title: A terror-supporting organization." If the claim, as spokesmen for the Secretary General said, is that Guterres did not know that these were the parents of terrorists, Indor indicated, he should meet the terror victims' families and apologize. To atone for the fact that he visited Arafat's grave, Indor suggests Guterres visit the graves of terror victims in Jerusalem.
Tearing down statues has become a major issue in the US these days, although one could argue there are countries where the problem is more pressing.
Consider:
Protesters have gone from demanding that the Washington Redskins change their name to advocating the removal of statues honoring the Confederacy. In the former case, they claim that name of the football team uses a disparaging name for Indians. In the latter case, they claim that Confederate statues honor what the Confederacy stood for -- owning slaves.
Matters came to a head this month when protesters in Durham, North Carolina succeeded in tearing down a statue of a Confederate soldier:
The protests go beyond just anonymous confederate statues.
There are demands that statues of General Robert E. Lee be removed as well.
The demands go beyond leaders of the Confederacy, to include removing the statues of slave owners in our nation's history, including Andrew Jackson, Thomas Jefferson and George Washington.
The demands go beyond American slave owners, to Christopher Columbus.
If #RobertELee is to be erased from history, why not erase #ChristopherColumbus whose arrival ignited genocide of Native Americans?
If action is to be taken on these various targets, the first step should be to figure out if there is an issue to begin with -- are people really offended?
An NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll last week found that 62 percent of respondents thought statues honoring leaders of the Confederacy should “remain as a historical symbol.” Only 27 percent of those polled wanted the statues removed. It is noteworthy that, by 44 percent to 40 percent, African Americans did not support removing Confederate statues.
If action really is to be taken on statues, monuments and football team name, it should be done democratically, and reflect the opinions of those people who are assumed to be offended.
Contrary to the protesters, we don't seem to have reached that point yet and tearing down those statues at this point is just vandalism.
A better case could be made against Mt. Rushmore, which was built on land that was seized from the Lakota Indians after the Great Sioux War of 1876. Previously, the Black Hills had been granted in perpetuity to the Lakota under the Treaty of Fort Laramie in 1868.
Picture of Mount Rushmore monument. Credit: Dean Franklin. Wikipedia
However one feels about the Confederacy and the reasons behind the Civil War, the statues themselves are not dedicated to slavery or its defense. It was part of the of dealing with the war and its aftermath.
A different case can be made for Nazi Germany, where statues, monuments and stadiums were seen as a way of glorifying and paying tribute to the Nazi ideology.
Not surprisingly a better case for tearing down statues, with a broader consensus, was made following the defeat of Nazi Germany.
Yet history tells a more complicated story. In its initial years, de-Nazification had only limited impact. It would take time, generational change and external events to make Germany what it is today—a vibrant democracy that is notably less permissive of racism, extremism and fascism than the United States. Tearing down the symbols of Nazi terror was a necessary first step—but it didn’t ensure overnight political or cultural transformation. It required a longer process of public reconciliation with history for Germans to acknowledge their shared responsibility for the legacy of Nazism.
It was not until decades later, during the 1970's that Germany gained closure on coming to terms with its history, but not because of tearing down statues. Among the things that aided the process, both of Germany coming to terms with its history and with the Jewish state, were:
Belated public investigations into German war crimes on the eastern front
Israel’s capture and trial of Adolf Eichmann
Criminal trials in Frankfurt of Auschwitz concentration camp guards
The Six-Day War
The Yom Kippur War
The massacre of Israeli athletes during the 1972 Olympic games in Munich
The American miniseries, "Holocaust" -- whose 4 episodes were watched by 20 million viewers
We can argue over to what degree the US needs to have a similar reconciliation with its past, especially of the Confederacy.
The US in fact might not need to go through the same kind of healing process that Germany did.
But the Palestinian Arabs do, whose anti-Israel and antisemitic cartoons still make use of Nazi imagery.
Today's Palestinian Arabs have their own ideology of hate, one which has led them beyond cartoons, to build monuments dedicated to murderers of unarmed men, women and children, in the name of "resistance"
The Jenin municipality last month named a square after “martyr” Khaled Nazzal, a Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) operative who planned a massacre in the northern town of Ma’alot in which Palestinian terrorists murdered 22 schoolchildren and four adults. It also erected a monument in Nazzal’s honor.
When the IDF took down the statue, it was put back up the next day.
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In July 2016 Abbas ignored Israel's request and went ahead with a monument honoring the late Palestinian terrorist Ahmad Jabarah Abu Sukar. Known as "the refrigerator bomber," Abu Sukar planned the detonation of a refrigerator filled with explosives in the center of Jerusalem, murdering 15 people and wounding more than 60. The monument describes Abu Sakar as a "heroic martyr" -- an example to emulated if not glorified.
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In 2010, in a ceremony attended by dozens of Palestinian students a public square was dedicated to Palestinian terrorist Dalal Mughrabi, who in 1978 helped carry out the deadliest terrorists attack in Israel's history. The official ceremony had been put off so as not to coincide with a visit by Vice President Biden, who was there to promote peace talks:
The woman being honored, Dalal Mughrabi, was the 19-year-old leader of a Palestinian squad that sailed from Lebanon and landed on a beach between Haifa and Tel Aviv. They killed an American photojournalist, hijacked a bus and commandeered another, embarking on a bloody rampage that left 38 Israeli civilians dead, 13 of them children, according to official Israeli figures. Ms. Mughrabi and several other attackers were killed.
While the confederate statues are a reminder of the slavery and abuse suffered, those monuments do not glorify it.
While the Nazi statues glorify the leaders of the party and of Nazi Germany, they did not explicitly glorify the murder of Jews. Most of the concentration camps themselves were in Poland. Germans at the time did go along with sending Jews to the camps and the gas chambers, but when confronted with the facts, they still retained a sense of shame.
On the Palestinian leadership of Hamas fires rockets indiscriminately at Israel, without regard as to whom may be hit. They also encourage attacks on Israeli civilians. For their part, Abbas and the Palestinian Authority incite hatred against Israel through the glorification of terrorists, whether through monuments, programs or the preaching of radical imams.
The Confederacy and Nazi Germany are in the past.
The Palestinian Authority and Hamas are now in the 21st century inciting hatred and murder out in the open in a way that would surprise the Nazis.The West, meanwhile, turns a deaf ear to this in a way that would make Neville Chamberlain seem like a brave man of integrity.
No one expects those same US protesters to take note of all this and make an issue of Palestinian statues glorifying murder half way around the world, but one would think that at the very least they would demonstrate an awareness of the situation, instead of making excuses for it.
If statues and monuments are going to come down anywhere, statues and monuments glorifying Palestinian terrorists must come down as the very first step towards an honest peace plan.
(Even though there are countries with statues dedicated to Palestinian inciters of hate and terrorism who have no intention of tearing those statues down.)
Statue of Yasser Arafat in Mexico City, Mexico.
Credit: Adrián Cerón, Wikipedia
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With all the press given over the Temple Mount, people tend to forget that the Palestinian Authority (and the Muslim world as a whole) is just as adamant that Jews do not have the right to pray or even be outside the Temple Mount as well.
The Palestinian Authority Minister of Waqf and Religious Affairs, Sheikh Yusuf Adais, issued a statement yesterday on "Zionist attacks" of the "Al Aqsa Mosque" during August. Some of these "attacks" include:
- Likud MK Yehuda Glick set up a symbolic office outside one of the gates of the Temple Mount. He sat in a chair.
- Israel continues to allow archaeological research outside the Temple Mount (such as in the City of David.)
-"Dozens of settlers prayed prayers" outside one of the Temple Mount gates
And finally:
- "Thousands of settlers performed the Talmudic rituals at the Wall of Al-Buraq" - meaning thousands of Jews went to the Western Wall to commemorate Tisha B'Av, the anniversary of the destruction of the Temple
All of these "desecrations" are just as upsetting to the Palestinian Authority as Jews calmly walking around the Temple Mount, what they call "storming Al Aqsa."
In other words, when Israel is pressured to compromise on any part of Jerusalem or the Land of Israel, its "peace partner" will go just as crazy and incite just as much terror as they insist on the next part. If Israel withdraws from territory, they ask for more. If Israel gives up all the West Bank, they would ask for more. We saw it in Lebanon when Israel left every square centimeter according to the UN - and Hezbollah made up excuses to continue to "resist."
This is a long game, and the West simply doesn't understand any mentality that goes beyond an election cycle. The Palestinians might pretend to negotiate for short term gains but they never give up on their objective of taking over all of Israel. After all, that's the entire reason for insisting on the "right of return."
And when a PA minister lists Jews praying at the Kotel as a "violation of Al Aqsa," the real outrage is that no one is reporting on what reveals the true Palestinian position, that Jews simply don't belong in Jerusalem altogether.
Here's a video apparently of Tuesday's walk by Glick and others that caused so much anger in Palestinian and other Arab media. (The video may actually be older, it was seemingly posted on YouTube on Monday but that might be a time zone issue.)
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The Tazpit News Agency story, reproduced by The Jewish Press and United With Israel, included the headline "Netanyahu: Israel Will Stay in Judea and Samaria For Ever."
I like a lot of things about Bibi, but in this case he was very careful to use words that would be interpreted by Zionists who support keeping Judea and Samaria the way this headline does.
But it isn't what he said.
We already know that Bibi has floated the idea of Jewish settlements remaining in place but under Palestinian sovereignty. That is a major part of the peace plan hat is in his head, and what he proposed to John Kerry a couple of years back.
Let's look at his actual words and see if it is consistent with his proposal to Kerry. Here are Bibi's words pieced together from Tazpit and Haaretz:
“This is the land of our fathers, this is our land. We are here to stay, forever...There will be no more uprooting of settlements in the land of Israel. It has been proven that it does not help peace. We've uprooted settlements. What did we get? We received missiles. It will not happen anymore."
Nothing about not allowing some settlements to become part of a Palestinian state. Remember, the Land of Israel isn't the State of Israel - the entire Palestinian entity would be inside the historic Land of Israel.
"And there's another reasons that we will look after this place, because it looks after us. In light of everything that is occurring around us, we can just imagine the result....From these hills we can see the Land of Israel from one end to the other.
“Imagine that radical Islamic forces were stationed on these hills. That would be a danger not only to us, but to all our neighbors. It would endanger the whole region and the entire Middle East. Given everything that is happening around us, one could only imagine the consequences....So we will not fold. We are guarding Samaria against those who want to uproot us. We will deepen our roots, build, strengthen and settle."
Israel would insist in any peace plan to maintain security control over the borders even to the Jordan. Israel would still be "guarding" Samaria even if most of it becomes part of another Arab state. Bibi would allow the strengthening of existing settlement blocs near the border and perhaps even add to them, but the settlements that are deeper inside the territories would not be under Israeli sovereignty.
Netanyahu is a politician, and a master communicator. Here is he giving one impression but he is saying something quite different, knowing that his audience would not consider the other interpretation. I wish he really did mean that Israel would hold on to every Jewish community in Judea and Samaria - but he didn't say that (unless there are other parts of the speech I missed.)
What is more concerning is that until I read this carefully wordsmithed speech, I entertained the idea that Bibi's insistence on allowing Jewish communities to stay intact under Arab rule was a bluff meant to expose the antisemitism inherent in the Palestinian leadership, as they would never accept the presence of Jewish communities. But when Bibi can't be explicit in holding onto all the settlements in a speech to settlers, it means that he really does want to transfer at least some Jewish communities to the Arabs, in the interests of territorial contiguity and the difficulty to protect the Jews in those communities as islands in an Arab sea.
I hope I'm wrong. But the matter could be cleared up in seconds if someone asks him about it in the Knesset.
(h/t Josh)
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“They asked me if it moved me when VIP’s came to visit me. And I was moved but it was even more special for me when people I have never met before showed up.”
Almost a month after the horrific attack that almost stole Niv Nehemiah’s life, preparing to be released from the hospital, Niv wanted to express his feelings about the kindness of strangers - the people who he had never met before who came to see him in the hospital, to encourage him, to tell him and show his family that they are not alone.
Have you ever gone to the hospital to visit someone you don’t know? Does that sound like a weird thing to do?
It’s something Israelis sometimes do.
Being in the hospital, being sick or wounded and needing to heal is a private sort of thing. Even the friendliest of people would normally prefer to be seen at their best, not while they are weak and suffering but in Israel strangers are just family you haven’t met yet.
In Jewish tradition, visiting the sick is a mitzvah, a good deed. I’m not sure how many of the people who visit people they have never met before do it out of the conscious desire to do a good deed. That thought comes up but, at least in my experience, it is secondary. The driving motivator is a feeling of being called to go, like it is something you should do. You hear about a story that touches you, a person that you feel special empathy for and something inside makes you feel like you should go to them.
The same is true for attending funerals of people you have never met before or visiting a bereaved family during the shivah, that mourning period. The reason for going is less a conscious thought and more a feeling that it is just where you are supposed to be.
The Yavneh supermarket terror attack on August 2nd, was particularly horrifying.
This is not the first attack to have been captured on camera but the footage made it very easy to see the cool demeanor of the terrorist as he almost casually chose Niv as his victim. The swift transformation from average man, like so many others walking those same aisles (the average places, everyone goes during their normal routine) who, in an instant, morphed in to a weapon of death thirsting for Jewish blood is sickening to witness.
But it was Niv, alone, that was particularly horrifying. Suddenly this regular man had to become a warrior, battling for his very life. And no one came to help him.
Why? I don’t know. Except for attacks that happen in locations where the victim is utterly alone, there is always someone who intervenes, someone who tries to come to the rescue. Here was Niv in a public place and no one came. In the video of the attack you can see two women running away. Were there no men in the store? (Were the only men there Arabs willing to let the attack play out?) I don’t know what happened but, like many other people in the country, I was left with the feeling that Niv should not have been alone.
Possibly that feeling is what drove strangers to visit Niv in the hospital. To show him that he is
not alone. To encourage his family. If he had been hospitalized closer to where I live, I would have gone too.
And here is Niv, a man who fought death with his bare hands, who is drawing hope from people he never met before that came to visit him in the hospital. He could have spoken about the horror of the attack, his concern about his family or how long it would take him to heal. Instead he wanted to thank God and the doctors that saved his life and speak about the kindness of strangers.
It is people like Niv that give me hope.
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Jews and other Israel supporters around the world work for the IDF in the same manner as fighters in the Syrian civil war: committing war crimes, both as volunteers and paid mercenaries on behalf of the Jewish state.
Really?
That’s the underlying message of an Al Jazeera “documentary” (it’s actually closer to a work of fiction) that skews context, overtly mistranslates statements, and even repeats outright lies in order to create this illusion.
The documentary begins with Elena Zakusilo, a Ukrainian Jewish woman who claimed on a local television game show that she served in a combat role in the IDF, including being forced by the IDF to murder innocent children: a form of blood libel that has served as an excuse for violence against Jews throughout history.
The IDF and Ukranian security services investigated: It turns out the woman had blatantly lied. In fact, the show’s producers had scripted her entire speech in a ploy to increase ratings, even though they apparently knew that Zakusilo’s role in the IDF had been low ranking, administrative and non-combat.
Al Jazeera then misleads audiences with a segment on an unrelated group called “Caliber 3,” a private firm that mostly trains civilian security contractors who work with the Israeli police. Caliber 3 also offers basic self-defense classes for private individuals, a minority of their work.
Yet Al Jazeera portrayed Caliber-3 as a military unit, and its civilian self-defense classes as a military activity. It’s like saying a person who takes a CPR class at the hospital is a surgeon. It’s just simply untrue.
Hardly a day goes by without reading about Al Jizz making a mockery of the notion of journalistic integrity and going out of their way to demonize Israel.
You know, one of the countries in which they have an office so they can provide “objective” journalism.
Last week, they came out with a report entitled Israel’s Volunteer Soldiers.
Naturally, it is a hit job on Israel and the IDF.
Naturally, it contains outright lies, none more severe than the inclusion of a proven blood libel. In November 2013, Elena Zakusilo, a Ukrainian Jewish woman, appeared on the Ukrainian TV show “Lie Detector”, revealing that she worked for the Israeli army and continued to do so.
“The first time I killed was difficult for me. I threw the weapon and said I wasn’t going anywhere. But I went,” she said and admitted to having killed civilians, including children.
Seriously, it is way beyond time Al Jizz was sent packing.
CAMERA's Israel office today prompted correction of an Al Jazeera English article which falsely stated that the Israeli coastal city of Haifa is located in "northern occupied Palestine" ("UK: Palestine activists face prison over Elbit protest").
As noted earlier today in CAMERA's Snapshots blog, Al Jazeera's Shafit Mandhai had redrawn the map, writing: Based in the city of Haifa in northern occupied Palestine, Elbit produces military and civilian-use equipment, including drones, aircraft, weapon control systems, and artillery.
This is a completely false characterization of Haifa, which the United Nations designated as part of the land intended for a Jewish state under the 1947 Partition Plan. According to the United Nations' present day map (as well as an "Oslo status quo" map published by Al Jazeera) the Israeli northern coastal city of Haifa is not in the "Occupied Palestinian Territories," which include the Gaza Strip, West Bank, and by some definitions eastern Jerusalem.
In response to communication today from CAMERA, Al Jazeera commendably corrected the article, removing the erroneous reference to "northern occupied Palestine." The corrected article now accurately states that Elbit is "[b]ased in the city of Haifa."
Responding to concerns of viewers and activists over discrimination, Al Jazeera and other media operations in the Arab and Muslim world have promised to achieve a more equitable distribution of entomological and zoological terms for use in referring to Jews, spokesmen for several such outlets announced today.
Audiences and critics have criticized the networks and publication in recent months for what they have called blatant bias in favor of certain classes of unpleasant creatures over others as derogatory metaphors for Jews, leading the organizations to examine their editing practices and style policies in an effort to achieve better representation of all types of vermin in their rhetoric.
Representatives of major Arabic networks and organizations issued statements today in which they declared their intention to undertake a revamping of procedures aimed at comparing Jews to a more balanced variety of blood-sucking, unsanitary, scavenging, or disease-spreading creatures, and to correct the situation that has pertained heretofore, in which apes, pigs, rats, cockroaches, snakes, dogs, and mosquitoes have been comparatively over-represented, while gnats, maggots, flies, bats, jackals, and other animals rarely feature.
“We apologize to our viewers and readers for the insensitivity displayed to date in our reporting and analysis vis-à-vis the depiction of Jews as scum-sucking vermin,” read Al Jazeera’s statement. “Al Jazeera hereby commits to ensuring a variety of pests, predators, and parasites to which to compare Jews and their schemes, and henceforth not to shortchange the termite, the locust, the mouse, the vulture, and the fox, for example. That is a random list; please do not yell at us for not including your favorite disgusting creature in this apology.”
Last year, Haaretz what is actually a very informative article about archaeology in Saudi Arabia and the history of the ostensibly Jewish kingdom of Himyar in parts of today's Saudi Arabia and Yemen.
But a closer look finds the type of bias we all come to expect from the newspaper.
One of the key, but often forgotten, players in Arabia at the time was the kingdom of Himyar.
Established around the 2nd century CE, by the 4th century it had become a regional power. Headquartered in what is today Yemen, Himyar had conquered neighboring states, including the ancient kingdom of Sheba (whose legendary queen features in a biblical meeting with Solomon).
In a recent article titled “What kind of Judaism in Arabia?” Christian Robin, a French epigraphist and historian who also leads the expedition at Bir Hima, says most scholars now agree that, around 380 CE, the elites of the kingdom of Himyar converted to some form of Judaism.
The Himyarite rulers may have seen in Judaism a potential unifying force for their new, culturally diverse empire, and an identity to rally resistance against creeping encroachment by the Byzantine and Ethiopian Christians, as well as the Zoroastrian empire of Persia.It is unclear how much of the population converted, but what is sure is that in the Himyarite capital of Zafar (south of Sana’a), references to pagan gods largely disappear from royal inscriptions and texts on public buildings, and are replaced by writings that refer to a single deity.
Using mostly the local Sabean language (and in some rare cases Hebrew), this god is alternatively described as Rahmanan – the Merciful – the “Lord of the Heavens and Earth,” the “God of Israel” and “Lord of the Jews.” Prayers invoke his blessings on the “people of Israel” and those invocations often end with shalom and amen.
...One big question that remains about the Jews of Himyar is what kind of Judaism they practiced. Did they observe the Sabbath? Or the rules of kashrut?
Some scholars, like the 19th century Jewish-French orientalist Joseph Halevy, refused to believe that a Jewish king could persecute and massacre his Christian subjects, and dismissed the Himyarites as belonging to one of the many sects in which Christianity was divided in its early days.
Robin, the French epigraphist, writes in his article that the official religion of Himyar may be described as “Judeo-monotheism” – “a minimalist variety of Judaism” that followed some of the religion’s basic principles.
The fact is that the few inscriptions found so far, along with the writings of later chroniclers, who may have been biased against the Himyarites, do not allow scholars to form a clear picture of the kingdom’s spirituality.
But there is another way to look at the question.
Through Christian and Muslim rule, Jews continued to be a strong presence in the Arabian Peninsula. This is clear not only from Mohammed’s (often conflictual) dealings with them, but also from the influence that Judaism had on the new religion’s rituals and prohibitions (daily prayers, circumcision, ritual purity, pilgrimage, charity, ban on images and eating pork).
In Yemen, the heartland of the Himyarites, the Jewish community endured through centuries of persecution, until 1949-1950, when almost all its remaining members – around 50,000 – were airlifted to Israel in Operation Magic Carpet. And while they maintain some unique rituals and traditions, which set them apart from Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews, no one would doubt that they are indeed, the last, very much Jewish descendants of the lost kingdom of Himyar.
This is the author of the Haaretz piece, Ariel David, making up the idea that Yemenite Jews are descended from converts to a watered down Judaism in Himyar, not quoting any scholar or archaeologist.
Because they would laugh at the idea that today's Yemenite Jews were descended from Himyar converts.
For one thing, there is a record of Jews and synagogues in Yemen centuries before the Himyar kingdom conversion to Judaism. Clearly Jews were an important part of the kingdom which is one reason why the Himyarites chose Judaism as a possible unifying factor for their kingdom and conquests. But their actual interest in Judaism was political, not theological.
Secondly, DNA records show that Yemenite Jews are closely related to other Jews.
Haaretz is pushing a new type of "Khazar" theory that Yemenite Jews aren't really Jews. It's antisemitic when applied to Ashkenazic Jews and it is antisemitic when applied to Yemenite Jews.
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The fourth week of August .. 5 commando operations and wounding 3 Zionists
In the context of the follow-up and continuous statistics of the Jerusalem intifada, in the fourth week of August 2017, the Intifada site monitored 5 attacks wounding 3 Zionists in various parts of the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem.
In the town of Teqoa in the Bethlehem governorate, a Zionist soldier was injured by the stones of the youth of the uprising, after the clashes that took place in the town.
In Shu'fat refugee camp in East Jerusalem, a settler was injured by stones thrown at him during clashes in the camp.
In the town of Housan, Bethlehem district, a settler was injured by stones thrown by the village's residents.
The Zionist occupation forces claimed to have thwarted two stabbings in the city of Ramallah and the occupied city of Jerusalem.
During the fourth week of August, a group of young men in the occupied West Bank attacked Israeli occupation forces in the occupied West Bank with two explosive devices at Rachel's Camp and Aida camp.
Any one of these attacks, motivated by racism, would be front page news in the US or Europe.
But Palestinians are expected to act this way against "Zionists" or "settlers" (meaning Jews.)
Which is perhaps the most important reason why they do.
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When Congress returns to work in early September, pro-Israel activists will seek to put the Taylor Force Act high on the Senate and House agenda. The legislation, passed by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in August, would cut off all direct economic aid to the Palestinian Authority (PA)—which last year was about $300 million—with the exception of its funding for East Jerusalem hospitals. The reason? To compel the Palestinian Authority to stop handing out stipends to convicted militants who carried out attacks on Israelis and foreigners, like the March 2016 Palestinian stabbing attack that killed Taylor Force, a U.S. Army veteran. On its face, there is a compelling reason for the bill. Why should American taxpayers give aid to an authority that subsidizes payments to killers and their families? The Senators and pro-Israel activists asking this question say these payments incentivize violence, especially for young Palestinians with personal problems who know that, if they attack Israelis, their families will be taken care of by the Palestinian Authority.
It’s tough to peer deep into every individual attacker’s psyche, and in some cases the payments may help Palestinian militants rationalize their actions. However, lost in that argument is that the main reason Palestinians cite to justify violence is Israel’s punitive occupation. And more importantly, the public debate about the legislation, and the prisoner payment program, has been devoid of crucial context. No lawmaker has shown an iota of interest in exploring why it is that the payments to Palestinian prisoners and their families exist—and why the bill will likely fail in its goal of getting the PA to stop the payments.
Dozens of bereaved Israeli families whose relatives were murdered by Arab terrorists, have penned an open letter to United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, demanding the UN stop funding organizations which provide terrorists with legal aid.
More than 40 families have signed onto the letter, Channel 2 reported on Tuesday, warning that groups benefiting from UN funding were “paving the way for the next murder”. The authors of the letter cited two organizations in particular which have been engaged in “legal warfare [lawfare]” against the State of Israel. Both groups – Hamoked: Center for the Defence of the Individual, and Adalah – receive significant funding from the UN, despite the legal aid they regularly provide to terrorists and the families of terrorists, challenging counter-terror activities by the government in the Supreme Court.
Between the two of them, Adalah and Hamoked received more than 2 million shekels ($559,143) from the United Nations in 2016, the letter noted.
The UN’s support for groups engaged in lawfare activities against counter-terror efforts is unique to Israel, despite increased anti-terror measures in countries around the world.
“In recent years we have witnessed a significant increase in terrorism around the world,” the letter reads, “countries around the world have been harmed as a result of extremist Islamic terrorism, but we see that only in Israel does the UN take sides and fund the legal defenses of terrorists who murdered innocent people.”
An upcoming “blacklist” of major international companies with business ties to Israeli communities in Judea, Samaria, the Golan Heights and eastern Jerusalem represents yet another attempt by anti-Israel actors in the United Nations to single out and demonize the world’s only Jewish state, experts say.
The U.N. Human Rights Council (UNHRC) had voted to approve the database of businesses last year, defying objections from the U.S. and Israel. U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Prince Zeid bin Ra’ad Zeid al-Hussein submitted a draft of the blacklist to the countries where the businesses are based. He is expected to receive a response from those nations by Sept. 1, and the UNHRC will publish the database by the end of this year.
American firms on the list include Caterpillar, TripAdvisor, Priceline and Airbnb, The Washington Post reported.
“[The blacklist] is the latest incarnation of the decades-long Arab boycott and yet another singling out of Israel by the U.N. Because Israel, the Jewish state, alone is singled out, the intent and impact is anti-Semitic,” Anne Herzberg, a U.N. expert and the legal advisor for the Jerusalem-based NGO Monitor watchdog group, told JNS.org. Similarly, Israel’s Ambassador to the U.N. Danny Danon described the list as “an expression of modern anti-Semitism reminiscent of dark periods in history.” While the list will have no legal consequences for Israel or the companies involved, its opponents say it could put pressure on the U.N. Security Council to take action.
Israel's National Library has a fascinating article showing children's practice sheets to learning Hebrew from the Cairo Genizah, a thousand years of how Jewish children learned to write.
These sheets shows the child having written the Hebrew letters over and over again, just as they do today.
Younger children were given hand-crafted worksheets by their teachers with the Hebrew letters written in outline to be colored in. Coloring books are not that new!
But my favorite is this sheet of practicing writing the Hebrew alphabet that ends up with a series of doodles.
That's pretty much what my schoolwork looked like as well.
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Every year, the Saudi king hosts hundreds of Palestinians whose family members are "martyrs" - i.e., terrorists - for the annual Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca.
Fatah's Facebook page describes the reception as "A full reception with red carpets, roses and sweets for Palestinian martyr families as soon as they arrive in Mecca for the hajj as guests of the custodian of the two holy mosques, a reception befitting the sacrifices of their martyrs."
Saudi Arabia might not like Hamas very much, but it doesn't mean that it is against terrorism against Jews.
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This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For 20 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.
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